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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 33 No. 15 1970

The Power of the Universities

The Power of the Universities

In spite of all these troubles the medieval universities were very powerful indeed. Paris, Bologna, and Oxford has at least as much influence as Harvard, or MIT, or Cambridge has today. They were most powerful when they had no possessions of their own. Staff and students could pack up their books and the Common Seal of the University in a chest and then they would go away and establish a university in another city. A university brought wealth to the city which housed it and glory and fame to the community. The threat that scholars would leave if their demands were ignored brought mayors, kings, and even emperors to heel. Student migrations created new universities all over Europe. Oxford was probably founded by scholars who fled from Paris; and Cambridge by refugees from Oxford. Once the universities acquired their splendid buildings and pious benefactors gave them real estate and books and gold and silver plate, they ceased to be mobile and they had to stay and fight it out where they were. Great wealth immobilised them and destroyed their power. They have never been as powerful as they were when they were penniless.